Page:Bierce - Collected Works - Volume 09.djvu/47

Rh all his life and be not only of no advantage to his fellow poor men, but by his competition in the labor market a harm to them; for in the abundance of labor lies the cause of low wages, as even a socialist knows. As a consumer the man counts for little, for he consumes only the bare necessaries of life. But, if he pass from poverty to wealth he not only ceases to be a competing laborer; he becomes a consumer of everything that he used to want — all the luxuries by production of which nine-tenths of the labor class live he now buys. He has added his voice to the chorus of demand. All the industries of the world are so interrelated and interdependent that none is unaffected in some infinitesimal degree by the new stimulation. The good that he has done by passing from one class into another is not so obvious as it would be if his wants were all supplied by one versatile producer, purveying to him alone, but the sum of it is the same. Yet the socialist finds a pleasure in directing attention to the brass hoofs of the millionaire executing his joyous jig upon an empty stomach — that of the prostrate pauper, — poets, muckrakers, demagogues and other audibles fitly celebrating the performance with howls of sensibility.